Chapter 6 - Beneath Our Bed
There was no room beneath our bed.
Or so I believed.
Thomas moved the frame.
Under the rug was a narrow metal seam.
A hidden floor panel.
Key 17 opened it.
Steven looked horrified.
“I didn’t know about this.”
For once, I believed him immediately.
His fear was too genuine.
We lifted the panel.
A ladder descended into darkness.
Not a basement.
A narrow lower service room beneath the bedroom.
We used phone flashlights.
Inside:
A metal desk.
Old recording equipment.
Boxes.
A cot.
Fresh water bottles.
Someone had been there recently.
Lucy found a jacket.
Dark canvas.
Torn sleeve.
Matching the stained fabric.
Michael’s jacket.
Not Steven’s.
The brown stains had dried.
Blood?
Maybe.
Not enough to know.
Then Thomas found a digital recorder.
One file.
Michael’s voice.
“If Lucy is hearing this, then I either left or Steven stopped me.”
Steven closed his eyes.
Michael continued:
“Steven is not the person you should be most afraid of.”
Thomas looked at him.
Steven whispered:
“I told you.”
The recording:
“Robert Hale’s system had three keys. Steven inherited one. I found the second. The third belonged to Anna Reed.”
Michael’s mother.
“If Anna is alive, she can open the archive Robert hid under the east foundation.”
Lucy covered her mouth.
“Alive?”
Michael believed so.
He found a bank account opened five years after her supposed disappearance.
Tiny transactions.
Same handwriting on authorization forms.
Then:
“Someone has been using the passages to watch Emily because Emily has the third key.”
I nearly dropped the recorder.
“I don’t.”
Steven looked at me.
“Your necklace.”
I touched the silver pendant my mother gave me before she died.
Simple oval.
I wore it almost every day.
Steven had asked about it years earlier.
Mom said it belonged to my grandmother.
Michael’s recording continued:
“Emily’s mother, Carol Bennett, worked with Anna Reed.”
My breath stopped.
I had never heard Anna’s name.
“Mom?”
“She helped Anna disappear.”
Everyone stared at me.
The recording:
“Emily doesn’t know because Carol never told her. Robert used the Hale house to hide Anna after she discovered the financial network. Then Carol moved Anna somewhere else.”
Steven whispered:
“My father helped her.”
Maybe Robert wasn’t simply villain or protector.
Maybe both.
Then Michael’s voice became urgent.
“There is one person who has spent twenty-eight years trying to find Anna and the archive.”
Pause.
“If that person learns Emily has Carol’s key, she will not be safe.”
Thomas whispered:
“Who?”
Michael answered:
“Steven’s mother.”
I stared.
Steven’s mother, Margaret Hale, lived forty minutes away.
Sweet.
Soft-spoken.
The woman who brought me soup when I had the flu.
Steven shook his head violently.
“No.”
Then we heard footsteps upstairs.
Not from the hallway.
From inside the hidden passage.
A woman’s voice called:
“Steven?”
May you like
He went white.
“Mom.”
